ARIES: Whoa, fertility code red, Aries! I just read that the total eclipse of the sun due on the first of August is right smack in the middle of your fifth house of love, romance, children, and pregnancy. Do what you’re going to do. Just remember, this is how Geminis happen.



TAURUS: This week finds you stewing in your annoyance with a whole bunch of unrelated trivialities. For example, Twenty Manning down the street has just put in some kind of sidewalk misting system attached to the awning, covering their sidewalk tables. The result of this is that the al fresco diners are surrounded by lovely jets of superfine, dry-ice-machine style fog that may or may not help keep them cooler as they hog the entire sidewalk with their seared tuna, pomegranate martinis, and overstuffed senses of entitlement. The other result of this is that people using the sidewalk for its intended purpose, namely, walking down the street minding their own fucking business, are forced to walk directly through it. Is this new super-bourgie sidewalk dining feature hurting or even really inconveniencing anyone? Nah. Does it foster an even higher degree of preexisting knee-jerk resentment for the people eating there, making Twenty Manning an Official Asshole Establishment of sorts? You tell me, Taurus. In fact, tell everyone about it. That’s the kind of mood you’re in this week.



GEMINI: The human mind has a great capacity to learn huge amounts of information almost effortlessly when the subject is something that directly applies to them. As a Gemini, you’re probably saying “no shit” right now, because your whole astrological thang is absorbing huge amounts of information whether or not it directly applies to you. This week, I want you to focus on learning the Gay Hanky Code by heart, regardless of your sexual preference or even interest in knowing what your friends and neighbors are really into. Half of them probably don’t even know that their black bandanna means that they are into heavy S & M, or that if it has faded a little bit to a more sedate charcoal color, it indicates a latex fetish. That red bandanna tied around the neck of your golden retriever? Well, it’s indicating its interest in fist fucking to all the other dogs in the park. And should you find a robin’s egg blue bandanna, not to be confused with light blue (wants head) or medium blue (cop), you are basically telling the world that you are willing to engage in 69. Think of how entertaining your life will be for a week or two after you memorize this entire list.



CANCER: This random webpage poses an interesting forensic solution to sifting through all the smutty, tabloidtastic details that now accompany political scandals for probable truth. The author calls it the Pubic Hair Test, referring to, of course, the pubic hair that your fellow Cancer, Clarence Thomas, allegedly put on a can of soda and showed to his colleague, Anita Hill, who later sued him famously for sexual harrassment. This website posits that Anita Hill could not possibly be making that shit up, as it is just too weird. As the author of this article, Jerome Doolittle, states: “God knows whose pubic hair that was, or what the future Supreme Court justice thought its presence on a Coke can signified, or what made him imagine that his weird performance might be seductive, but the incident plainly happened pretty much the way Professor Hill said it did.” The Pubic Hair test can be applied to just about anything, as it basically means seeking out the stranger-than-fiction detail in any story and assessing whether anyone could possibly have made it up. I think this is a pretty fail proof system myself, although to use it, one needs to have a large degree of faith in their own ability to judge what’s normal in the first place… something you’re good at, Cancer. When in doubt this week, apply the Pubic Hair Test to everything. Hopefully it will keep you from applying actual pubic hairs to anything and then showing it to a girl you work with. 



LEO: Do you ever feel as though you’re at a loss for something to tell people when they ask you horrible questions like, “What do you do for fun?” or, “What was your childhood like?” This week, it’s time to hone the official story. Take your cue from Caddyshack character Lacy Underall, whose hobbies include skinny-skiing and bullfights on acid, or Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, whose uneventful childhood went something like this: “My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it’s breathtaking, I suggest you try it.” Oh man, I cannot believe how hard that shit still makes me laugh. You have to beat this, Leo. Your pride depends on it.



VIRGO: Joanna Martine Woolfolk, authoress of the uniquely explicit Sexual Astrology, says something nice about the men born under this sign in her second, slightly less outrageous book, The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need. “To some women, he may seem lacking in romance, at least in the cinematic tradition of moonlight, roses, and masked men riding into a cobbled courtyard. A woman will never look down from her balcony to find him strumming his guitar and singing romantic ballads. But in the cold light of dawn, in the real world we all inhabit, Virgo men have a lot more to offer than masked riders or lovesick troubadours. For one, a Virgo lover will still be there with the dawn’s early light. He won’t be riding off to sing ballads to someone else.” May I add that his parents might even show up just as you’ve discovered that he’s been poking holes in the condoms all along? You might call it “entrapment,” but a dude Virgo calls it “providing.”



LIBRA: So, I have this shirt that I decided was super lucky somewhere over the course of the six or seven years I’ve owned it. It’s an orange and blue plaid cowboy shirts with pearly snaps and I have worn it so many times that it pretty much no longer has anything even closely resembling elbows. It’s practically see-through, the kind of article of clothing so ratty and fucked up that it’s basically turned into my version of one of those baby blankets kids keep sleeping with long after they have ceased to resemble anything even close to a blanket. Earlier this year, I had a crisis of sorts where I ended up having the epiphany that while this is my lucky shirt, it is also an extremely unlucky shirt, were I actually irrational enough to blame both every good thing and every bad thing that has happened to me in seven years on it. I almost staged a little rooftop burning session with it, but at the last minute I changed my mind. It’s still around somewhere, but I’ve stopped wearing it all the time or making such a big deal out of it. Sometimes being all dramatic about things that are actually super-mundane to the point of being comical is not the best way to exorcise their power over you. Just saying.



SCORPIO: Everything I know about Scorpios, I learned from watching Purple Rain. Why did The Kid want Apollonia to “prove herself” by jumping into the river if he was just going to stand on the bank and laugh at her and then pretend to drive away on his motorcycle? Um, because he liked her. Why did he sing “Darling Nikki,” a theoretically super-insulting song were you the Apollonia in question, at her in the club right when he was theoretically trying to win her back from the other sleazy band manager guy? Uh, cause he really, really liked her? Why did he feel absolutely zero shame prancing around in a career-related snit for the majority of the movie, with the odd interlude of frantic humping and/or crying? Duh, cause he’s Prince. I remember watching this movie on a slow Sunday afternoon at a restaurant I worked at, and my co-worker (she was a Virgo) just kept repeating incredulously, “Who does that?” Scorpios, that’s who. And I mean, I guess it’s cool because would anyone really laugh directly in Prince’s face? I don’t think so. They’d be too afraid he’d do something fancy with his hands that was really some kind of evil hex. Or maybe just start shrieking wordlessly like, “dabbadabbadabbaYEEEEE!!!” Even if things like hexes and shrieking do not outright scare you, you have to admit that it would still be pretty fucking awkward.



SAGITTARIUS: This week is all about extreme indolence. The kind where you lie on your back and get distracted from navel-gazing by the beads of sweat welling up on your chest. The kind where you start thinking that you know how paraplegics feel because you can’t move your limbs either. The kind where you pretend you live in Colonial India, and your ayah just died of the cholera, rendering you completely helpless to button your own boots or feed yourself grapes so you guess you’ll just go ahead and waste away then, bitch. The kind where you try to call out of work with the vapors. At first, this will be totally enjoyable. By midweek, though, you’ll be going stir crazy. Get off your ass and take a walk, at least. There are still six or seven bikini weekends remaining in the summer and the atrophied look is not going to help you make out with any lifeguards.



CAPRICORN: An unsuccessful Capricorn is a very unhappy Capricorn… which is probably why Capricorn spends so much time being thoroughly miserable, as no one has higher standards for success than you. Occasionally, you’ll decide that it’s totally unfair to live under the pressure you put on yourself, and you’ll wile out for a bit: Boozing, dicing, whoring, the whole nine yards. The problem with this is that you’ll be kicking yourself even harder than usual as soon as you snap out of it. This is due to be one of those kicking-yourself weeks, Capricorn. I’d tell you to stop it and be nice to yourself, but you’d just give me that evil look like I am a fruit fly you know better than to do battle with, and then you’d go ahead and do things your way anyway. The good news is that your way tends to produce the kinds of results that you’re striving for eventually. Emphasis on the “eventually.” Well, at least you have a good sense of perspective: Thinking about being you for a day depresses the shit out of me, too.



AQUARIUS: Consider honoring one of your irrational phobias by finding others like you on the Internet this week. Are you an ornithophobe, avoiding the park at all costs in case some lonely old person decides it would be cute to feed the pigeons? Or maybe you’re more of a macrophobe, who fears long waits. Start here for a complete list, because you never know when you’ll discover a new phobia you didn’t even know you had, such as gamophobia: The fear of marriage. Maybe it’s less of a fear and more of a passionate hatred? In that case, see for inspiration: I Hate Cilantro, an anti-cilantro community.



PISCES: Pisces have long had a bad rap as being wishy-washy truth-stretchers who salve their delicate, too-fragile-for-this-world souls with booze, pills and bad love. Even on good days, say the real astrologers, their abject sense of duty and humility gives them a near-phobia of success. They might have to take credit for it. Or make money. Or alienate some of their friends, like that homeless guy that camps out under that awning near their apartment who somehow manages to convey that he likes them better than anyone else on earth even though he never talks back or even really wakes up. This week, Pisces, it looks as though you’re being confronted with a measure of worldly success that you can’t think of a way to selflessly give up. Since you wouldn’t have gotten here were you not capable, your real job this week is to avoid, at all costs, becoming depressed or confused by this. Repeat after me: “I deserve this. I have earned it. Now I will enjoy it or die trying.” Now go out and find some booze, pills, and bad love to celebrate.

Loren Hunt is a writer living in Philadelphia who has channelled your spirit animal through a mixture of high-grade medical marijuana and khat, the drug that has brought Yemen to its knees. More of Ms. Hunt’s writing can be found here; please, she does not want to be disturbed. Direct your queries regarding your horoscope to tips[at]philebrity[dot]com and they will be duly forwarded. Ms. Hunt’s horoscopes shall appear each Monday on Philebrity.







This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am.